Hi eveyone. It's been a while since my last blog so I'll try to fill in the blanks over what I've up to for the past eight months. In the past week I decided it was time to get a PS3; I'd been saying I would as soon as the Dualshock controller was available so the new 80GB model was quite tempting. I've been enjoying the PS3 so far, but it's not replaced the 360 as my main games console.

So that's my current setup above. My other consoles also make regular appearances but it depends upon what I'm playing at the time. The majority of my gaming recently has been with a handful of games; GTA IV, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Assassin's Creed (all played on my 360).

My PS3 collection is pretty small just now as I only own Motorstorm and Ratchet and Clank Future. There's other PS3 games I'd like (Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo Prologue and Resistance to name a few) but I'm currently more psyched about the upcoming 360 releases; Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears 2 and Banjo Kazooie. There's so many good games coming out in the next couple of months that I'm gonna have to be picky about what I buy because I really can't afford them all (nor would I have time to play them).

Just now I'm finishing off GTA. I really would like to get 100% and the achievement that comes with it, the only thing putting me off is the street races which I'm not finding to be much fun. The other racers are either miles behind you (boring) or they catch you on the very last corner, flip your vehicle and leave you cursing that you ever started the race. Grrr.... But as you can see from the photo, revenge is delt out swiftly with the RPG, lol.

I've really enjoyed GTA IV although there's some stuff which I hope Rockstar can fix for the next game. Climbing ladders is broken, most of the time Niko shuffles around the ladder for five minutes before actually climbing it. The game feels quite different from previous GTA's but most of the stuff that was fun in previous games is still there. Just don't give up on the rather slow first island and you should enjoy this game.

The other game that took up a lot of my time was Oblivion. Despite owning Oblivion since I first got my 360, I only really got into it a few months ago. I think the overall scale of the game put me off a bit; I wasn't sure what to do next and didn't want to make decisions that would screw up elements of the game for me.

Of course, I shouldn't have worried, there's not much you can do to really screw up the game unless you happen across one of the glitches and then save afterwards. By the time I'd unlocked all the achievements I'd been playing Oblivion for just under 170 hours, which is pretty extreme even by my standards. The funny thing is I still haven't completely finished it; there's still loads of quests that I could do. Maybe one day I'll finish them all... maybe.

So that's about all from me for now. I'll try to get my next blog completed in under eight months, lol.

Later,

alxbly.

As you get older you'll find that there's one thing that you seem to have much less of and that's time. It hasn't always been like this. When I was younger time could be split into two distinct sections; there was school and there was fun. Sometimes you'd have some fun at school and occasionally school homework would eat into your fun but, apart from those rare exceptions, everything was pretty straightforward.

Now it's a different story. My work, family, friends, girlfriend, TV, forums, eBay, gaming and everything else all demand my time. Since I have less time than ever (or so it seems) I've had to make cutbacks. Now, it's not easy cutting back your gaming when you're a multi-console kind of guy like me and the console manufacturers don't make it any easier. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony insist on releasing great games much faster than I can play them, which creates a tension. Games line up on my shelves, all screaming to be played and flashing their titles at me (oo-er!). I have to calmly choose which will be the lucky one that I'll spend the night with.

And to further confuse matters, it seems that since I discovered the joys of online gaming I've completely forgotten what a single player game is. Nintendo and Microsoft did try their best to jog my memory when they threw a double whammy of Super Mario Galaxy and Bioshock at me, but I was already smitten with the Orange Box. These days Call of Duty 4's multiplayer has stolen a bit of that love but it's more the occasional mistress than the loving wife; a bit more intense and a lot more dangerous!

What I have found is that my games collector/player balance has been turned on it's head. In the past a large portion of my time was spent on eBay trying to find rare games, import titles and limited edition controllers. Now I spend hardly any time on eBay and a lot more time actually playing games. The thrill of finding a rare game has been replaced with a more sustainable thrill of playing games I genuinely enjoy.

So I guess I've come full circle, back to the thing that originally excited me about games. For me it was all too easy to get caught up in a collectors frenzy and I ended up buying games because of their status; "rare", "import", "valuable" or "limited edition". I found some real gems but also ended up buying some terrible games as well. I still drool over the rare, the valuable and the limited editions but now I think "will I ever play them"? And if the answer is no, they don't belong in my collection.

As is traditional with blog posts at this time of year, I need to nominate my own "Game of the Year". For this task I'm going to pick the game I most enjoyed playing in the previous year... and it may or may not have been released in 2007.

I started the year playing The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. This was THE reason to get a Wii at launch for most people and I was no different.

I found Twilight Princess to be very enjoyable and I finished it in about a month. Sadly, the game gives you very little reason to play through it again. The "new costume" at the end of Wind Waker was the only excuse I needed to start up another game, which made Twilight Princess denying you a reward for completion a bitter pill to swallow. Maybe that was the reason that, unlike OoT, I didn't find myself wanting to play through the game again.

I've heard other complaints about Twilight Princess on the Wii; the controls felt tacked on, the camera isn't great, etc, etc. Personally, these things weren't a problem for me. I enjoyed the fishing and battle sequences immensely and, in my opinion, the controls felt just right. I'm certainly not tempted to swap the Wii release for the Gamecube version because the main complaint I had (about replayability) hadn't been addressed. To sum up, Twilight Princess was a good, thoroughly enjoyable game but in retrospect it's not my favorite Zelda.

My next game, Dead Rising, was probably the first to show me the "true power of the Xbox 360" *cliche alert*. It's still great to play today as the combat options are so varied that the game never feel old, and the number of zombies is just.... wow! This game really raised the bar in terms of how many intelligent enemies you can see at once. And the imagination and humour that's been put into the weapons is also amazing; I never knew that killing a zombie with a shower head could feel so right and so wrong!

But the most amazing thing about Dead Rising are the bosses, which are all really nasty pieces of work. No two are the same and there's so many scattered through the huge shopping mall playground that you could have difficulty finding them all. Dead Rising came very close to being my favorite game last year. But if I'm going to talk about huge open environments then there's a few other titles I need to mention as well.

Crackdown came bundled with an invitation to the Halo 3 multiplayer beta when it was released in Spring 2007. This was probably a good move for sales, but a bad move for the game as I suspect it remained unplayed whilst people played the Halo beta. Initially I found Crackdown difficult to get into; I'd played it a few times and didn't think much of the way your character always ended up in conflicts with gangs (like the one pictured above). But, given a bit of time and exploration the good qualities of the game shine through. There is a huge environment to be explored and, althought the map is open to you from the start, seeing everything will take some time.

The beauty of Crackdown is the platforming that's been built into the environment. Your character is a genetically engineered super human (don't groan) who can jump higher and run faster than your average joe. These, and other powers, enable the character to develop throughout the game; you can increase your powers by collecting orbs of various colors. As you develop you can jump higher and reach places you wouldn't dream of having reached when you first start the game. It's brilliant fun and gives you the feeling that Crackdown isn't just another GTA clone.

Sandbox games were my favorite genre in 2007, and yet another one that I spent a lot of time with is Just Cause. Every time I play a game with an open environment I can't help comparing it to what I think is the best sandbox game of all; Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. San Andreas was breathtaking and, in terms of sheer size, there's few games that can match it. And Just Cause makes San Andreas look tiny.

Sadly though, Just Cause doesn't stand up as well when you experience the gameplay. There are a lot of elements which GTA fans will recognize; you can enter any vehicle whether it's a car, boat, helicopter, motocycle or fighter jet. There are also plenty of missions to undertake as your character tries to "liberate" the the many islands that you can explore. The main story missions won't take long to complete but there are a wealth of side missions you can try at any time. It's here that Just Cause falls a little flat, as the side missions can be broken down into about six different varieties which are repeated in different locations. Even although there's planty of variation in the vehicles and weapons you can use, the limited scope of the missions can get a little dull at times.

What seperates this from other sandbox games is the stunts and parachuting. The parachuting is a nice touch, aided by the grappling gun which is used to attach yourself to vehicles. Once you've done this you can open your parachute and paraglide across the landscape. It's a great way to see the lush, highly detailed islands of the game. You can also perform stunts from any vehicle although these lack the realism in other elements of the game. For example; hanging on to the side of a helicopter/fighter jet with one hand whilst it's travelling at speed? It's just ridiculous. If there were some story to explain why your character could do this it might be more acceptable (after all, you can easily jump 100 metres in Crackdown) but it's never explained. And it just looks silly.

The most anticipated game of the year for most people was probably Halo 3. As with any game which has such a high profile, there was an immeadiate backlash. The ending was definitely better than Halo 2's unsatisfying climax, but there were still questions left open for the next Halo game.

Halo has never been one of my favorite series. I find the games enjoyable and well executed but have little desire to play deathmatches online or even replay the campaign. In my rush to see the series climax (which would inevitably be spread all over the internet within days) I played the game on easy difficulty. That was a mistake. Now that I've seen the ending I don't have the motivation to play it through again for the achievements. Maybe I should rope in a friend for some online co-op? Yeah, that sound much more appealing.

I did enjoy the story, though. And I don't by any means dislike the game. Like so many things that become popular, it's almost fashionable to hate Halo. I don't hate it, but I don't consider myself a huge fan either. I guess the developers have almost got themselves in a rut because Halo is seen as the king of it's genre. Halo players have spent countless hours getting to know the series inside out; the balance of the weapons, the best maps, the way to rocket jump and where to hide. It will be difficult for them to change the formula and, perhaps because of this, Halo 3 is really just an evolution of Halo 2. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Well, that only works so many times before the critics begin to bite. My own opinion is that Halo 3 delivered enought new elements to make the game feel fresh, whilst keeping enough of the old for anyone who's played the previous games to feel at ease.

I'm a sucker for updates, especially to games I've enjoyed. There was no doubt in my mind that i would be buying Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, simply on the basis that the Gamecube original has been so good and I wanted to play the extra content.

RE4 Wii Edition didn't disappoint. The controls feel great, almost as if the game had been specially made for the Wii. Capcom deserve soooo much praise for this game, and even more when you look at the utter crap that other third party developers are putting out on the Wii.

The extra content isn't unlocked from the start so I needed to play through the game again to unlock it. Wii controls made this very enjoyable, even if I did know what was around the next corner. This is definitely the best version of the game that I've played (the only verion I haven't played is on PC), although whether it's worth buying the game again will depend on what version you already own. If you own the PS2 version, you've seen pretty much everything that's on offer here, except for the great control scheme. Not that the PS2 version had a bad control scheme... but this is better!

There was one other game that I replayed in 2007 and that was Half Life 2, as part of The Orange Box package. Let me just say that The Orange Box is my "Game of the Year" as I've found it to be more fun than anything else. Yeah, more fun than Call of Duty 4, more fun than Metroid Prime Corruption, more fun than Bioshock and more fun than Super Mario Galaxy. The reason for this is the diversity that Orange Box offers.

In case you didn't already know, The Orange Box is a package of five games; Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. All of them are played from a first person perspective but don't be fooled into thinking that they therefore must play the same because they don't.

First you have Half Life 2, which probably the best single player game ever created. The story, atmosphere, characters, weapons, locations, enemies... everything in the game has been carefully crafted to give the best possible experience. Half Life Episodes 1 and 2 are more than expansion paks; they are the next chapters of the game, and should offer (in total) around 25 hours of gameplay. And even more if you haven't played them before. There are a few minor annoyances; the vehicles in the 360 version of HL2/HL2:E1/HL2:E2 aren't the easiest to control at times as accelleration and braking has been mapped to the control stick. This seems a silly move, surely these would be better placed on buttons or (preferably) the triggers of the controller. The other minor complaint is the reliance on the gravity gun. The gravity gun is cool, but there is so much emphasis on it that it sometimes becomes a bit... repetative. The climax of Episode 2 is the best example of this, but I'll say no more for fear of spoilers. In any case, they don't detract from the excellence of the games.

Portal is a puzzle game where you must find you way out of each level by using portals. Your gun can shoot two portals which always connect. Think of it like two sides of a card; the blue portal one is always on the opposite side of the orange portal. This means that if, for instance, you fire one portal on to the floor and one on to the ceiling then when you jump into the portal on the floor you will fall from the portal on the ceiling. It's difficult to explain but it makes sense when you see the game in action.

The puzzles become progressively more complex as you progress and each one requires you to stretch your imagination a little more. Portal also has a great sense of humour which will keep you coming back for more. Like Half Life 2, the player is encouraged to experiment to succeed. Later levels will through new elements into the puzzles; energy balls that must meet their target, sentry guns and the lovable companion cube. If it sounds strange that's because it is. But you'll still love it.

Lastly, there's Team Fortress 2. I dunno where to start with this one. I've never played a multiplayer game this much since... well... probably since Goldeneye (my favorite game ever!!!). It's so well balanced and has so many layers that it becomes seriously addictive. The premise of the game is simple; work as a team to capture intelligence (think capture the flag, but with a movable flag) or control point (bases).

The enjoyment comes from the different characters you can play as. Each character has different strengths, weaknessess, weapons and abilities. The balance of the game comes from no one character being unstoppable; each one has a weakness that another can exploit. Each character therefore must be played differently and too many of the one kind of character can be disasterous. Each game plays out depending on the characters your opponents have picked, if you play wisely you can take advatage of this. If you stick to one character you probably won't play as well as you could.

I could talk about Team Fortress 2 forever, but this blog is already long enough. All that remains to say is Happy New Year to everybody. I hope you all enjoy 2008.